1966 the Frontiers of China by Watson s

8/12/2019 1966 the Frontiers of China by Watson s

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THE FRONTIERSOF CHIN

YF R N C I S W T S O N

FREDERICK A.PRAEGER ublishersNew York Washing ton


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OOKS T H A T M A T T E R

Published in the United States of America in 1966by Frederick A . Praeger Inc. Publishers

111 Fourth Av enu e N ew York N .Y . 10003

l l r i g h ts r e s e r v e d

1966 by Fran cis W atso nLibrary of C ongress C atal og Card Num ber: 66-12989

Printed in the United States of America


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C O N T E N T SCommunism or Imperial ism? age 9

T H E S H A P E O F C H I N A 9C O N S E Q U E N C E S O F C O M M U N I S M I 4T R D I T I O N L T T I T U D E S I 6A S P E C T S O F F R O N T I E R - P O L I C Y 9A N I 8 4 B A S E L I N E ? 24F R O N T I E R S A N D S E M I - F R O N T I E R S 2 7

I T h e Northern Marches in History 31E M P I R E S I N C O N T A C TT H E C E N T R A L A S I A N A R E AT H E M O N G O L I A N A R E AT H E M A N C H U R I A N A R E A

I T h e Quest ion of Tibet 54C A P A C I T Y T O N E G O T I A T E 54T H E T I B E T - C H I N A B O U N D A R I E S 56T H E P A R T I T I O N O F T I B E T 59

IV A New China on the Frontiers: 1950-3 6 2T H E Y A L U R I V E R : F R O N T I E R O R S E M I -

F R O N T I E R ? 62H I M A L A Y A A N D K A R A K O R A M 6 5F R O M T H E S A L W E E N T O T H E S E A 75W A R N I N G S I N B U R M A A N D I N D I A 79V T h e Bandung Phase: I 954-9 8 3F R O N T I E R S A N D T H E F I V E P R I N C I P L E S 83B A N D U N G A N D I T S A F T E R M A T H 8 7I N D I A , B U R M A A N D T H E M C M A H O N

L I N E 9 3L A L I A K H A N D T H E A K S A I C H I N I 0 0


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C O N T E N T ST H E R O O T S O F D I S P U T E I 0 6M O T I V E S O F C H I N E S E P O L I C Y I I

VI Effects of the Tibet Crisis: I 959-60 114T H E P O L I T I C A L C L I M A T E I I4T H E P O L I T I C A L CHA L L E NG E I 1 6P E K I N G W I D E N S T H E D I S P U T E 1 1 8P R O P O S A L S A N D C O U N T E R - P R O P O S A L S 1 2 2

VI I Frontier Fence-mending I 959-6 I 1 2 6T H E S E T T L E M E N T W I T H B U R M A 126BU F F E R - Z ON E S I N C H I N E S E P O L I C Y 130

N E G O T I A T I N G W I T H N E P A L 3A F G H A N I S T A N A N D P A K I S T A N 1 3 ~S I K K I M , B H U T A N A N D T H E F I V E

F I N G E R S 141VIII T h e Politics of Invasion and Withdrawal I45T H E U N D E C L A R E D W A R W I T H I N D I A 145T I M I N G A N D O B J E C T I V E S I soT H E I S O L A T I O N O F I N D I A 53T H E C O L O M B O R E C O M M E N D A T I O N S 57O T H E R C H I N E S E S E T T L E M E N T S 1 6 1

IX Sino-Soviet Border-Tensions 169T H E I L L U S I O N O F S T A B I L I T Y 1 6 9T R O U B L E I N S I N K I A N G I 7 0B E H I N D T H E M O N G O L I A N S E T T L E M E N T 173T H E N O R T H - E A S T E R N Z O N E 1 7 ~M A T T E R S O F P R I N C I P L E I 78T H E S O V I E T A N D T H E I N D I A N

Q U E S T I O N S 1 8 2X Frontiers in a New E r a 1 8 5

A N U C L E A R P O S T U R EM A P S U N D E R R E V I S I O N


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C O N T E N T SN E W L O O K A T T H E N O R T H - E A S TI N D O - C H I N A A S A F R O N T I E R - Z O N ET H E P R I V I L E G E O F P A C I F I C A T I O NT H E K A S H M I R S Y N D R O M ES T A L E M A T E I N T H E S O U T HT H E P R O B L E M O F D I S A F F E C T I O NP R A G M A T I S M A N D P A T I E N C E

ibliographyIndex

M A P SI . China and her Neighbours2. Mongolian Area3 Manchurian Area4 T i b e t5 Sino-Indian Frontier: Eastern Sector6 Sino-Indian Frontier: Western Sector7 South- East Asia8. Central Asian Area

page I o4 275794

1 1

I 277


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C O M M U N I S M ORI M P E R I A L I S MT H S H A P E O C H I N A

H I N A s long land-frontiers ( including by her action in1950 the southern f ront ier of Tibet) run wi th twelveindependent o r p ro tec ted S ta tes : the U S S R , the M on go -lian PR, Korea (North) , Vietnam (North) , Laos, Burma,India, Bhutan, Sikkim, Nepal, Pakistan defacto west ofthe Kashmir cease-fire line), and Afghanistan. Britain inH o n g Kong , and Po rtug al in M acao , re ta in coastal colo-nies established by treaty; an d in Taiw an (Formosa) an dthe neighbouring offshore islands the r ival ChineseNationalis t regime enjoys United Nations s ta tus andU n ite d States protect ion.

T h e Governm ent of the Chinese People s Republic, ontaking power in 19 49 , declared that i t w ould re-examinetreaties conclu ded by its predecessors w ith foreign powers,an d either recognize, abrog ate, revise or reneg otiatethem . T h i s was n ot in i tself a repud iation of inh eritedinternational commitments, but a notice of the intentionto question their validity as an d w hen th e occasion shou ldbe judg ed appropriate in P eking . Between I 9 6 0 a nd I 96new frontier-agreements were concluded by China withBurma, Nepal , Mongolia , Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In the general configuration of i ts terri tory, China to-day can be described in th e phrase used by its Co m m un istGov ernment of particular issues w ith i ts neighbo urs. I t isa prob lem left over by imperialism . I n plainer lan gu age ,


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T H E F R O N T I E R S O F C H I N A

U 5 . 5 R

L / m / t r o f Monchu /mper/o/ controlos osrumed by lu Pe/-huo IPS7_

U 5. S R

I N D I A N O C E A N

I China and her Neighboursthe extent of Peking s control results in very largemeasure from the interaction of three historic empires inAsia. Two of these, the Chinese and the Russian, havebeen strengthened as political units by the force of Com-munist revolution. The third, the British, has been peace-


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C O M M U N I S M O R I M P E R I A L I S Mfully dissolved, leaving to new national States the respon-sibility of frontier-relations with the power-system to theNorth. The subsequent disappearance of French colonialpower from South-East Asia produced a similar confron-tation, though under different circumstances. The Japan-ese Empire, destroyed in World War 11, has ceased tofurnish a frontier-question on the Asian mainland. China shistorical relations with the United States, now designatedthe leader of the imperialist camp in Communist propa-ganda, did not involve strictly territorial considerations.

Any discussion of a frontier-question must proceedfrom some basic attitude to territorial possession andnational sovereignty. The simplification of the idea ofCommunist-Imperialist struggle propounded- even indisagreement y Peking and Moscow, has allowed it tobe assumed that the liquidation of empires is an orthodoxCommunist principle, together with the right of subjectpeoples to establish their own inviolable frontiers. I t is thepersistence of this theme that has given a startling air tothe exposure of the great-power element in Communistpolitical behaviour. For a Communist State to suppressnational minorities within its own territories, and to makeclaims or attacks upon the territory of others, appeared asa contradiction or as a failure to practice an ideal. Reactionto such a spectacle has consequently tended to vary be-tween revulsion and incredulity.

The self-assertive politics of the major CommunistStates are not, however, incompatible with Marxist ideas.The original Marxist preoccupation was with the largeand powerful State as the essential foundation of Com-munism, and it has persisted. On questions of nationalself-determination and sovereignty the doctrine was atfirst negative. It was the tactics of revolution within the


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T H E F R O N T I E R S O F C H I N Amulti-national Russian Empire which demanded a newpoint in the Communist programme, because and onlybecause , as Lenin explained to his followers, nationalistmovements had become importantly active inside theRussian, Persian, Turkish and Chinese Empires. Theeventual consolidation of Soviet power within the frontiersof the Tsarist dominions required first the encourage-ment, and subsequently the defeat, of nationalist andfederalist aspirations. Theoretical cover for the operationwas supplied by Stalin, in the gloss that the right ofnations to self-determination must be subordinated tothe right of the working-class (i.e. of the Soviet State) toconsolidate its power .

The large centralized State as the only path to Social-ism was equally accepted by Mao Tse-tung and theChinese Communists. So was the tactical requirement ofa declaration in favour of self-determination for non-Chinese peoples within the inherited imperial frontiers.This appeared in the constitution drafted by the ChineseCommunist Party in 1931, eighteen years before itachieved power. It was there undertaken that the minoritypeoples may either join the Union of Chinese Soviets orsecede from it and form their own State as they mayprefer . In the event the Chinese People s Republic be-came a unitary State incorporating minority autonomousareas , thereby abandoning even the nominal federalprinciple, with its dead-letter of permissive secession, ofthe Russian Soviet constitution.A more important difference is to be found in therelative poverty of the imperial inheritance to which SunYat-sen and his Republicans succeeded in 1912 . and

Yu an Shih-kai secured the Presidency with the compliance of Su n Y at-senwhose party w s later renamed the Kuornintang or Nationalist Party.


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C O M M U N I S M O R I M P E R I A L I S M ?Mao Tse-tung and his Communists in 1 9 4 9 In theSoviet Union irredentism-as distinct from the generalambition of extending Communism-was in no greatevidence before the Second World War. But the terri-tories and advantages then acquired by the USSR rep-resented the fulfilment of historic though outwardly aban-doned imperial ambitions of frontier-extension.* In thecase of china irredentism was an essential feature of thepolitical climate in which the Chinese Communist Partywas established and operated. As a target for internal dis-satisfaction the imperial regime had already been removed.The tendency to externalize grievances was thereforestrengthened, with prompt assistance from Japan in herTwenty-One Demands of I 9 5 T o respond to a nationaldynamic was for the Chinese not a question of consolida-ting an extensive dominion but of restoring one that hadbeen despoiled. But since the chief of its despoilers, in theterritorial sense, had been the rival ~ u s s i a nEmpire, apowerful effect was caused by the Soviet announcement ofJuly 1 9 that The Government of the Workers andPeasants has . . declared null and void . the treatieswhich were to enable the Russian Government of the Tsarand his allies to enslave the people of the East and princi-pally the people of China. This declaration (subse-quently known as the Karakhan Declaration) undoubtedlyplayed a part in the conversion of Mao Tse-tung toMarxism, a conversion which by March 1920 (accord-ing to his own testimony) had taken place in theoryand to some extent in action . The Chinese Commun-ist Party was founded in the following year, and for

Soviet frontiers in Europe were extended to take in nearly 180,000 sq.miles of neighbowing territory containing more than 2 million people, whilein the Far East the former rights of Tsarist Russia were invoked againet thedefeated Japanew.


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T H E F R O N T I E R S O F C H I Nits first eleven years retained the closest links withMoscow.

C O N S E Q U E N C E S O F C O M M U N I S MSoviet failure to implement the Karakhan Declaration,however much it rankled, could only confirm the Marxistbelief in power-politics. In adapting the great-powerfoundation of Communism to their national aspirations,both Russians and Chinese had the support of traditionalattitudes-a Messianic tradition in Russia, the pride ofMiddle Kingdom civilization in China. But the Chinese,

with a special sense of national grievance, have shownfewer inhibitions in asserting territorial ownership. Ex-pressions parallel with China s Sinkiang or China sTibet have not been used by the USSR in relation to,say, Kazakhstan: still less to Outer Mongolia, now thePeople s Republic, which would undoubtedly have beenChina s Mongolia if the Chinese Communists had beenin a position to implement a claim upon the territorystronger in several ways than that which they enforcedupon Tibet. Nor has the Chinese Communist Party foundit necessary to justify Chinese Imperial expansion as aprogressive factor , as Soviet ideologists have argued inthe case of the Tsarist conquests.

It has often been said that the replacement of China spolitical chaos by any strong central government would befollowed by a revival of frontier-questions. The ChinesePeople s Government, indeed, found it necessary toanswer, in its memorandum to the Indian Government on6 December I 959, the rather prevalent observation that

China has now grown strong and, like certain Chineserulers in history or modern imperialists, would seek ex-pansion abroad . The fact that it was the Chinese Com-


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C O M M U N I S M O R I M P E R I A L I S M ?munis t Par ty that captured power in 949 was to haveparticular conseq uence s in frontier-relations as well as th egeneral result of modernizing the Chinese consciousnessof imperial mission. T o dis ting uish so m e of these effects

(i) T h e ideological impetus of Communism stimulated andtransformed the operations for control of the non-Han peoples inoutlying areas and the development of their territories which anystrongly-established rCgime would have attempted. This broughtChinese armies and Chinese settlers into regions which had scarcelyseen them in the past, and dictated the course of new communica-tions. One of the avowed objects of the Chinese move into Tibetin I 950 was to defend China s frontiers -i.e. to militarize them.

(ii) Relations with Soviet Russia, affecting the larger part ofChina s land-frontiers, were established in ideological terms whichappeared to suppress the powerful factor of national rivalry. T h eproblems arising between fraternal Socialist States , and the methodsof solving them, were distinguished from those that might arisebetween China and her non-Communist neighbours. T h e eventualwidening of the Sino-Soviet schism towards the revival of frontier-disputes therefore found each party accusing the other of being thefirst to introduce problems between States into the debate.

(iii) Ideology also produced the serviceable dogma that a Soci-alist State cannot by qfnition commit aggression. Frequentlyasserted in Chinese Communist propaganda, this was sometimesadumbrated even in official communications (e.g. in the note toIndia of 26 December 1959). Echoed at the same time by spokes-men of the Communist Party of India, it inevitably worsened thefrontier-dispute between the two countries. Titoist rejections of theproposition were attacked by Peking as revisionist heresy.

(iv) Conditions of internal Communist control of opinion facili-tated manipulation in the Chinese conduct of frontier-diplomacywith non-Communist neighbours. In the dispute with India, forexample, officially organized demonstrations and statements inChina were invested with the authority of public opinion, whilefree comment in India-by individuals, in parliament, or in thepress-was used for official Peking charges against the IndianGovernment.


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T H F R O N T I E R S O F C H I N A(v) T o the uncertain political potential of Overseas Chinese

communities in South-East Asia the emergence of a CommunistChina added a further problem of loyalties. Communist Partiesinside the new national democracies on China s borders, acceptingthe requisite of an established base for revolutionary activity, paidparticular attention to frontier-zones. T h e strength of the externalpolitical attachment can be seen in the case of the CommunistParty of India, where even after Chinese invasion the pro-Chinesefaction was persistent enough to cause a split in the Party.

For any country sharing a boundary with China, theextent to which the Communist regime is prepared torevive the territorial claims of past empires is clearly of thefirst importance. T h e Communist system in itself offers norestraint to such ambitions. It postulates the expandedState as the area of development, and it seeks to obliterateethnic, linguistic, religious and cultural factors as thebases of independent nationalism. T h e only restraint onChinese policy in this matter arises from realistic appre-ciations of the need for a peaceful period of developmentwithin existing frontiers, and of the anticipated resistanceto attempts to change them at any one time or place.

T R D I T I O N L T T I T U D E SEven to define China raises certain difficulties. Thesehave commonly been met by historians by reference to aChinese civilization rather than to a Chinese nation- atheme which can readily be preserved in a modern frame-work of ideological supremacy transcending national dis-tinctions. In the history of frontiers it has meant theacceptance of a Chinese territorial entity composed ofwhat was once called China Proper together withChinese Dependencies . At the end of the 19th centuryChina Proper was still, roughly speaking, the MiddleKingdom of the last purely Chinese dynasty of the Ming

I


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C O M M U N I S M O R I M P E R I A L I S M ?Emperors, lying south of the Great Wall and east ofTibet. But th e only frontier-zones of today s People sChina corresponding to those of the old Ch inese Ch inaare those with the Shan States of Burma, Vietnam andLaos. Even th e vast M an ch u (Ch ing) conquests did notextend the adm inistrative boun daries of Ch ina Pro pe runtil the last years of th e Em pire , when M an ch ur ia beganto be incorporated an d Sink iang became nom inal prov-ince . The Republ ican Government of the Kuomintangcarried the process of incorporation further. But thenovelty of th e Co m m unist un itary Ch inese State is to beseen in its preoccupation, after several millennia of im-perial history, w ith th e prob lem of m inority peoples an dtheir resistance to G reat H a n chauvinism .

T h e simplest fact of Ch inese frontier-attitudes in ancienttradition is illustrated by th e location of the G reat W all.T h e long sea-frontier presented no dan ger until com par-atively recent times, nor was th e da ng er und erstoodwhen it appeared. So uth of C hina s intensively cultivatedalluvial plains the mountain-regions were not impass-able, but the lie of range and river favoured infiltrationtowards the south rather than invasion from it . On thewest the Chinese homelands were buttressed by moreformidable ranges separating them from Ind ia and T ibe t,north of which ran the long and difficult desert-route ofwestern comm unication-a route which, tho ug h it m igh tlend itself to raiding as well as trading, did not inviteoccupation. T h e dan ger was from the north, and in fillingthe gap the Great Wall also completed the definition ofmonsoon-China, thickly settled and cultivated and cult-urally advanced, as distinct from the outer wilderness ofdesert and grassland and plateau ranged by nomadic,primitive and periodically dangerous tribes.


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T H E F R O N T I E R S O F CHINThe Wall, however, was neither a guarantee nor even

a symbol of a defined frontier. I n the 4th century A .D . andagain in the I 2th, China was invaded and partially con-quered from the north, and in the 13th century it wasentirely overrun by the Mongols and annexed to theirenormous empire. Nor, on the other hand, were thenatural and artificial boundaries of settled territory everregarded by the rulers of China as limiting their ownauthority. Agricultural settlement was pushed north ofthe Wall into Inner Mongolia. Expeditionary armiesfrom time to time enforced varying degrees of subservi-ence to the Imperial Court at immense distances, and theceremonial of tribute was preserved even where the reali-ties of power had changed or vanished-or where they hadnever existed, as in the devices of the later Manchu Courtto treat Western deputations as tributaries.

Even after the abdication of the Manchus and therevolution of I I I , therefore, there was at least a psycho-logical background in which China s frontiers were notviewed by the Chinese as having been fixed either bygeography or by history, and certainly not by the historyof a weak period of Chinese central government. Prof.C. P. Fitzgerald has written:

China was the civilized world; for centuries this was perfectly trueas far as Chinese experience reached, and the idea remained firm inChinese minds long after it had ceased to be true in fact. Territoryonce won for civilization must not be given back to barbarism;therefore, territory which was once Chinese must forever remainso, and if lost, must be recovered at the first opportunity. Such losscannot be legal or valid; it is at best a recognition of passing weak-ness. Th e whole growth of the Chinese Empire, throughout morethan 3,000 years, had been built on this principle; the barbarianswere conquered, then absorbed and turned into Chinese by slowassimilation and cultural influence. T o deny this process, to claim

I


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C O M M U N I S M O R I M P E R I A L I S M ?that it had, or should, come to an end, was to Chinese thoughtdenial of the right, a recognition of failure.

A S P E C T S O F F R O N T I E R - P O L I C YIn so far as this way of thinking persists (and there ismuch to suggest that it does so to at least some degree), ithas an effective corollary. T h e basic claim being almostmystically extensive, there is a tendency to avoid defini-tion; and it is fair to conclude that this has served con-scious purposes in the policies of the Chinese People sGovernment. With the prospect of a vague but generalintention to call her existing frontiers in question, Chinahas been able to hold all her neighbours under some de-gree of suspended sentence. How serious the threat maybe has depended upon a current view of China s ability toenforce it. But even this is provided for by the phrase atthe appropriate time in Chinese communications, usedagainst a background of propaganda looking confidentlyinto an extended future-as of an empire in time as well asspace. Nor is this picture destroyed by the evidence offrontier-agreements entered upon by the Chinese People sGovernment, or by the manner of their negotiation.

The timing of the Chinese approach to a settlement hasvaried greatly in response to political requirements, fromthe unhurried treatment of the first initiatives of Burmaand Pakistan to the sudden agreement with the Mongo-lian People s Republic. The calculations of opportunismare readily made, but in the absence of recognized pres-sures there is evidently much to be said, in the Pekingview, for an indefinitely open question. An imprecise butbasic dissatisfaction with an existing frontier having been

In The World Today January 1963 Royal Inst i tute of InternationalAffairs).


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T H E F R O N T I E R S O C H I Nmade known, even the prospect of negotiation can be putforward under a colour of concession, with future settle-ment as a mark of Chinese beneficence rather than as theratification of authentic territorial rights. So long as thequestion is kept open there is also the possibility of linkingChinese concessions with expectations of appropriatepolitical behaviour by the neighbour-country.

Thus Chou En-lai s 956 offer to recognize China sMcMahon Line boundaries with India and Burma wasmade to the Prime Ministers of both countries (after com-plaints from both about current Chinese maps) on accountof the friendly relations subsisting between both countriesand China . I t was honoured in the case of Burma, butrepudiated in the case of India, the Chinese Governmenthaving in the meantime taken offence at Indian reactionsto the Tibetan revolt and its suppression. In the later caseof Mongolia, although very little documentation of theChinese frontier-agreement was released, there were goodreasons for concluding that Peking had expected in return(vainly, as it turned out) at least a show of Mongolianneutrality in the Sino-Soviet dispute.The disposition to trade a border-alignment for a politi-cal advantage illustrates Peking s apparently basic viewof frontier-questions as political and ideological ratherthan juridical. The more direct bargaining of territory forterritory is also accepted as a negotiating technique; butits use has necessarily been complicated by Chinese regardfor the tradition quoted above-that territory which wasonce Chinese must forever remain so . Exchanges whichhad an important bearing on a settlement with Burmawere postponed by Chou En-lai s invocation of this prin-ciple. In the dispute with India there were early (thoughextremely discreet) indications that the Chinese might be


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C O M M U N I S M O R I M P E F I A L I S M ?prepared to pay for the vital Ladakh salient with a transferof territory in another border-zone. But the most reason-able quid pr quo, the contrary Tibetan salient of theChumbi Valley (which breaks the watershed-line in a deepand awkward- ndentation between Sikkim and Bhutan)could not be put on offer wit -qut damage to possessiveChinese doctrine., What w s put on offer, in a series ofmanceuvres which the Indians can be excused for regard-ing as first tortuous and finally blatant, was the 32,000square miles of territory south of the McMahon Linewhich formed the Indian North-East Frontier Agency.For whatever arguments the Chinese might find forquestioning India's title to this area, they themselves hadno title to anything but minor border-adjustments- andindeed had sought no more than these n setting up theirown markers, some forty years earlier, at selected pointsa few miles below the McMahon alignment. The entireChinese use of this large area as a factor in the disputedepended upon a cartographical device intended by itsKuomintang originators to disprove Tibet's capacity totreat with other nations. And in all these circumstancesChou En-lai's offer to recognize the McMahon Line as aboundary might have been thought hardly less sinisterthan its subsequent withdrawal.

'Cartographical aggression' has been the name given inneighbouring countries to the publication of apparentlymenacing Chinese maps which, on representations beingmade to Peking, were broadly disavowed but neither

his does not rule out the ~ o s s i b i l i t ~hat an Indian request for the ChumbiValley, against a settlement of Chinese requirements in Ladakh, might have beentaken up if it had been made at a propitious stage. But the difficulties of recog-nizing and seizing such an opportunity were considerable. The idea was infact floated in Delhi, but defeated inside the Government apparently by themistrust and resentment which Peking s conduct of the dispute had by thenaroused. See below, p. I 3


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T H E F R O N T I E R S 0 F C H I N Acorrected nor withdrawn. Whatever the political inten-tions of this practice, its political effects could have beenreadily foreseen. But it has not been the only indication ofa special Chinese attitude to what, at some stage of anyfrontier-question, must come to be seen as the facts ofthe situation . These were what Nehru regarded as deter-minable by a joint examination of the maps, treaties,evidence of administration and other documents on whicheach side relied for its case. The reluctance with whichChou En-lai assented to this proposal was made perfectlyclear. So was his preference for a prior agreement on anumber of points of principle . Since some of these im-portant points -for example the postulate that the entirelength of the frontier was open to fresh consideration-were not likely to stand up against any factual scrutiny, itmay be said that the Indian insistence on this procedure en-sured an eventual Chinese substitute of force for argument.

In the matter of treaty-evidence the Tibetan frontier(forming by far the greater part of the Sino-Indian con-tact) was that to which the Chinese hope of invalidating allprevious agreements was most tenaciously applied. T odiscuss treaties in any historical sense must endanger theirassumption of legal sovereignty over Tibet. T o discussthem officially, in sessions that might eventually be pub-licly reported, would expose them in a tangle of contradic-tions even at strong points of their case. general distastefor the treaties of the past, as the documentation of periodsof relative weakness in China s history, may have had someeffect on the Chinese attitude to maps-even, in some cases,to Chinese maps, which they disavowed as having beenproduced under foreign pressure or influence. But this isnot enough to account for the indifference or objection totopographical detail shown-at all events initially-by the


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C O M M U N I S M O R I M P E R I A L I S M ?Communist rulers of a nation which had once held map-makers and historians in great respect. T h e official ex-changes between Delhi and Peking on frontier-incidentswere notable from the outset for the Indian practice offurnishing co-ordinates of longitude and latitude; but itwas only later, and with difficulty, that the Chinese werebrought to introduce detailed data into their reports andallegations. Even when the joint examination of the ques-tion by officials of both sides was about to begin, theChinese had no map available for the purpose on a scalegreater than I 5 million. T h e Indians, who wanted towork with maps of I I million,* at length agreed toadmit the Chinese maps in order to get the talks moving.At their sixth meeting, the Chinese introduced a new map,in which their claims in Ladakh had been advanced bysome 2 000 square miles beyond the I 2 , 0 0 0 square milesoriginally objected to by India. And what seems signifi-cant is that when China s Foreign Minister, Chen Yitook up the matter in a speech of 6 December I 96 I , it wasnot to justify the discrepancy but rather to ignore it. Aclear and definite description of the boundary, he thenmaintained, was given in oth the Chinese maps.

The Chinese attitude to natural features as a principleof frontier-settlement has been somewhat confusing.Although Chou En-lai admitted them to consideration inthe points which he urged upon the Indian Government,they were later rejected in general sense, possibly be-cause of the river-line followed by the unequal frontier-settlements with Russia in the North-East. And althoughthe Chinese have in some cases (Burma and Pakistan)appeared to accept a watershed-line in mountainous areas,

The scale stated by the U N Cartographical Organization to be the leastpermitting reasonably detailed study.


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T H E F R O N T I E R S O F C H I Nthere is a good deal to suggest a historic Chinese prefer-ence for overlooking a neighbour by a frontier carrieddown the further slopes of a dividing range.

How far back are we to go? asked Nehru despairingly ata particularly infructuous stage in the Chinese explorationof the shifting power-limits of the remote past. Chineseirredentism has given no final indications of its horizon,and Sino-Soviet polemics have even revived-thoughperhaps hardly seriously-historical issues of the Mongolconquests of the 13th and 14th centuries. The territorialgrievances on which Peking has become most specific,however, belong to the I 9th century, in the latter era ofthe Manchu (Ch ing) Empire, itself the result of invasionof China from the North.

The initial declaration of principle (29 SeptemberI 949) as to the reconsideration by the CPR Governmentof previous treaties and agreements, had been phrased torefer to those concluded between the Kuomintang andforeign Governments . This position having been takenup, the Sino-Soviet (Chiang-Stalin) treaty and agreementsof 1945 were superseded and declared null and void bythe thirty-year Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and MutualAssistance concluded between Moscow and Peking onI 4 February I 950. But in securing this alliance, Mao Tse-tung had to confirm-at all events overtly-the relinquish-ment of China s tenacious claim to Outer Mongolia whichStalin had extracted from Chiang Kai-shek in the name ofMongolian independence . Other territorial questionswere either suppressed or tacitly postponed, and nothingmore was heard for thirteen years of the basic Chinesestand on treaty-revision.


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C O M M U N I S M OR I M P E R I A L I S M ?On 8 M arch I 96 3, however, the I 9 4 9 declaration was

recalled in an im po rtan t People s aib editorial, reactingto some taunts of K hrush chev on th e failure of the Ch ineseCommunists to liberate Taiwan, H o n g K ong and M acao.T h e word Kuom intang in the original declaration wasreplaced in this article by the phrase previous ChineseGovernments , thus including am on g challengeable agree-ments the unequal treaties accepted by a weakenedChinese Empire in the second half of the 19 th century.Twelve countries were alleged to have carried out un-bridled aggression against Ch ina in that period. M an y ofthese aggressions were non-territorial in character, an dhad in fact long since been voluntarily renou nced . O f th eterritorial beneficiaries, of course, the Russians had beenthe largest: and (despite rhetorical repentance) the mostretentive. T h ey were indicted in th e People s aily articlein respect of four 19th-century treaties: those of Aigun(1858), Tientsin (1858), Peking (1860) and Il i (or StPetersburg, I 8 8 I .

T h e time-scale of this exposure of grievances fits in withthe first of the three periods into which Chinese Com-munist historians of the present day customarily dividetheir revolutionary era. T h i s first period, op en ing in I 8 4 0with the mis-called O piu m W ars and end ing with theM ay Four th Movem ent of 19 19 , is named T h e O ldDemocratic Revolutionary Era . T h e second period, T h eNew D emocratic Revolutionary Era , extends from I 9 I 9to the establishment of the People s Repub lic in I 949 ndthe third , not yet concluded, is T h e E r a of Socialist Con-struction .T h u s the China of the Com m unist scale of measure-rr~en t s that of 1840 , when the frontiers of the M an ch uEmpire were still at their greatest extent. Although this


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T H E F R O N T I E R S O F C H I N Aneed not mean that the leaders of Communist China areirrevocably committed to restoring the boundaries ofI 84 0, it does mean tha t frontier-questions are liable to beconsidered with a map of China as at that period withinmental reach, even if it is not produced in evidence. Atleast one case is now widely known of the publication ofsuch a m ap for stud en ts in today s People s Republic,designed to show the Chinese terri tories taken by theImperialists in the Old Democratic Revolutionary Era( I 840-1919) . T h e book which carried this m ap o n i tsfacing-page was L iu Pei-hua s Brief History of ModernChina published in Peking in 1952 and reissued twoyears later in a second edition. Reproduction of this mapand its accompanying docum entation ou tside China at theen d of I 962, produ ced reactions which P ek in g had event-ually to counter by denying official responsibility. In theUSSR, as a Communist State, this disclaimer must havebeen particularly unconvincing ; an d on Septem berI 964, Pravda joined the list of foreign publications thathad drawn conclusions from th e map.

What can hardly be disputed is that for ten yearsChinese students had been permitted, if not encouraged,to believe tha t Chinese territories taken by the Im perial-ists in the O ld Dem ocratic Revolutionary E ra stood to berecovered by means of the liquidation of imperialism inth e E ra of Socialist Co nstruc tion . A similar implication,tho ug h without the ideology, had appeared in a nu m be r ofmap s circulating un de r the previous K uom intang regime.

A n Indian student in Peking M r Ghanshyam Mehta obta ined a co py ofthe book in 196 fter talking to Nepalese fellow-students who had drawn theattention o f their Prime M inister to it du rin g his official visit. A fte r returning toIndia M r Meh ta gave n o publicity to the matter until the Chinese militaryattack of November 1962 and the accompanying Peking propaganda attribut-in g to Nehru the intention o f creating an expanded Indian E mp ire.


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C O M M U N I S M O R I M P E R I A L I S MIn these, Prof. Fitzgerald has observed, 'the word forlost to is the word which in Chinese official histories is

used to record the loss of a town or city by the emperor torebels: it literally means betrayed . In the case of theCommunist textbook, the processes by which the terri-tories of the Manchu Empire had been reduced wereclearly suggested as arbitrary and invalid. China's 'GreatNorth-West', for example, shown in the map to coverlarge areas of the Russian SFSR and the Kazakh andKirghiz Soviet Republics, 'was seized by ImperialistRussia under the Treaty of Chuguchak, I 864'.

F R O N T I E R S A N D S E M I F R O N T I E R SThe import of the Liu Pei-hua map (or of the ideas whichallowed it to be published) is more than a matter of nos-talgia for lost conquests. What is significant is that theboundaries here assigned to the China of I 840 go inmany cases far beyond the limits of Manchu or any pre-vious imperial rule. They encompass foreign lands andpeoples which the Empire neither controlled nor admin-istered, where the most that could be claimed was atradition of tributary relationship. W e are thus confrontedwith the persistence into modern times, and under aCommunist system of government, of an archaic theory ofvassalage which virtually overlooks frontiers and mini-mizes their effective meaning.

Neither Mongolia nor Tibet, in this map, have anyfrontiers with China. They are namelessly absorbed.Highly disputable claims to Chinese sovereignty (in theMongolian instance signed away by the Chinese People'sGovernment itself four years before the book was pub-lished) are here converted into an extinguishing posses-sion. A southern frontier for China is indicated, taking in


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T H E F R O N T I E R S O C H I N Athe claim-line subsequently advanced against India. Butthis is only a semi-frontier. Beyond it a line pur po rtin g torepresent the Chinese borders of I 840 appropriatesNepal, Sikkim and Bhutan, the Indian State of Assam*and a part of East Pakistan, the Andaman Islands, thewhole of Burma, Thailand, Malaya and Singapore, andthe States of the former French Indo-China. Windingthr ou gh the Pacific th e line encloses (besides Taiwan) thesouthe rn Sulu archipelago of the Philippines, the Ryuk yuIslands to the so uth of Japan an d Sakhalin to th e north ofit. Korea is also retained, and so is the Chinese claim tothe Soviet m aritime territories an d th e Great North-Eastbeyond the A m u r R iver.

It is not necessary to examine in detail the fluctuatinghistory of th e influence of Chinese dynasties beyond theirsou thern borders, nor the grounds-self-chosen an d oftenshadowy-on which they held th e listed coun tries to bevassal States. The point is that any degree of formal vas-salage, or none, appears he re as a title t o inclusion withinthe Chinese boundaries. In many instances the lossessaid to have been sustained by C hina after 18 40 madelittle difference to the ceremonial exchanges fixed attraditional intervals. In some, for example in Nepal,certain observances could be taken to signify that Chinawas the tributary, rather than the othe r way round . B ut onthe evidence of this m ap the Chinese m ake no distinctionbetween losses resu lting from the advance of oth er im-perial pow ers an d those entailed in an act of independence.

T h u s Annam (the name given to the com bined Statesof Indo-China) is described in 19 52 as cap tured by theFrench in I 885 (from the Chinese); Burm a became a

The Indian North-East Frontier gency is not shown as having ever beenlost by China.8


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C O M M U N I S M O R I M P E R I A L I S M ?part of the British Empire in I 8 86' (after Assam had been'given to Britain by Burma in I 826')*; and Thailand orSiam, whose frontiers and neutrality were jointly guaran-teed by Britain and France, earns the complaint that it was'declared independent under joint Anglo-French con-trol in 1904'. Nepal likewise 'went under the British afterindependence in I 8 9 8'.

The preservation by a Communist rkgime of antiqueconcepts of vassalage might seem well adapted to thepattern of satellite States grouped about a modern Power.But today the Chinese view of a trihutary does not neces-sarily, or immediately, require its adoption of the Com-munist system. Indeed, where a 'lost' vassal has comeunder Communist rule (North Vietnam, North Korea),Peking has had a harder struggle for control because ofthe existence of a rival protector in Moscow. What isunderlined, however, by the sequence we are consideringis that the question of frontiers is for the Chinese pre-dominantly a political rather than a legalistic matter. Whatis a frontier as seen from one side, the neighbour's side,may be a semi-frontier from the other, where what mattersis a horizon of influence.

The Chinese view of history since I 840, no less thanthe present Chinese ideology, insists that this horizon isnot to be gained without the preliminary exclusion of anyother influence. Peking's support for the neutrality of theborder-State of Laos, as internationally proposed, wasclearly not a vote for the independence of the LaotianKingdom but for the removal of any external obstacle to

Af ter repelling the great Chinese invasion o f 1 769 , undertaken at the heig hto f Manc hu imperial power, the Burmese armies o f Alaungpaya s dyn asty hadravaged Ar akan, M anipur and parts o f Assarn. T h e challenge to British p owe rn Bengal led to the First An glo- Bu rm ese War (182 4-6) after wh ich B urmaceded Arakan and renounced an y claim u po n Assarn and M anipu r.


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T H E F R O N T I E R S O F C H I Nthe hegemony of its one powerful neighbour a hegemonyto be exercised as effectively across a frontier as in viola-tion of it. The Treaties of Friendship and Mutual Non-Aggression offered to Burma and to Nepal as logicalsequences of frontier-settlement may be said to representthe nearest thing to an exclusive relationship whichneutralist nation-states can be brought to consider.Burma accepted the relationship. Nepal modified it bydeclining the Non-Aggression Pact. With India, a muchlarger State with an influential international position, thefrontier-question took very different course. There wassmall likelihood that India, however friendly as a matterof broad policy, would accept any hint of exclusiveness inher relations with China. Yet this is what the People sGovernment at length demanded, in the Chinese Ambas-sador s appeal of May, 1959, for a realignment ofIndian foreign policy in harmony with the Chinese Com-munist view.

The Indian rejection of this approach was inevitable.Negotiations conducted upon such a condition, even ifthey should prove territorially satisfactory, would producea semi-frontier, not a settlement. Equally inevitable wasthe result of the Indian rejection, which demonstrablyhardened the Chinese attitude to the frontier-questionitself.


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T H E N O R T H E R N M RC HESIN HISTORY

E M P I R E S I N C O N T C TT H E boundaries between th e C hinese People s Re publicand th e U n io n of Soviet Socialist Re pub lics extend-evenwhen the Mongolian sect ion has been excluded as de-fining a separate State-for ap pro xim ate ly 4 500 miles.T h ey form th e world s longest f rontier between two States .In its origins, however, this is not a national frontier,even if i t be considered to be in t h e cou rse of becom ing s oby the forced integrat ion of minori ty peoples. T h e Sino-Soviet boundaries are the result of the shrinkage, over aperiod of at least thre e c enturies, of th e zo nes of co ntactbetween two exp and ing land-empires.

Neither the Chinese Revolution in 9 nor theRussian Revolution in rgr 7, brought th is process tofinality. But after the elimination of a third party-theJapanese Empire- in the Second W or ld W a r , the newrelationship between Co m m unis t r tg im es in M oscow andPe kin g appeared to point towards frontier-s tabi l izat ion.N ot only were th e two Pow ers l inked for th e f irs t tim e ina bilateral alliance. B oth p u t forwa rd a do gm a of specialrelations between Socialist States fro m which th e rivalriesan d conflicts of the capitalist world w ere t o be elimina ted.T h e long advance of each side in search of i ts own finalfrontier was implied to belong to th e discredited past.

D ur in g the lat ter par t of that per iod of advance, how-ever, Russian power had played the major expnnsionist


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T H E F R O N T I E R S O F C H I N Arble, Chinese power that of the weakened victim. This facthad received Russian acknowledgment, after the over-throw of the Tsars, in the Declaration addressed on 25July 9 9 to the Chinese nation and the Governmentsof Northern and Southern China .

The Government of the Russian Soviet Federated SocialistRepublic declares as void all the treaties concluded by the formerGovernment of Russia with China, renounces all the annexationsof Chinese territory, all the concessions in China, and returns toChina free of charge, and for ever, all that was ravenously takenfrom her by the Tsar s Government and y the Russian bourgeoisie.

Resounding rather than specific, the Karakhan Declara-tion was, as we know, never implemented. The most thatit produced in respect of frontiers was the 924 agreementby the Soviet and Chinese (KMT) Governments toredemarcate their national boundaries at a Conferencewhich, so far as there is any evidence, never succeeded inmeeting. The agreement was contained in the Sino-SovietTreaty and Declaration of 3 May 924, with the furtherstatement that pending such redemarcation the existingboundaries would be maintained.The Karakhan Declaration has not, on the other hand,been disavowed, and in the 1924 Treaty it was evidentlysupposed, with similar statements that had followed it, tobe guiding Soviet policy. It may therefore seem strangethat the Chinese Communists, when reviving territorialquestions in the People s aily article of March 1963,made no appeal to it, preferring to cite unequal treatieswhich they had long ago broadly pronounced to be nulland void.

It may be that the Chinese will yet produce these earlyrenunciations in proof of the present Soviet Government sbad faith and departure from revolutionary ideals. But it


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T H E N O R T H E R N M A R C H E Sseems equally possible that they have no wish to let theopen argument turn upon principles of self-determinationwhich might be invoked to their own disadvantage. Theseare what the Russian Communists have already success-fully exploited in the case of Mongolia. And the KarakhanDeclaration had contained a precautionary clause to thesame effect

T h e Soviet G overnm ent has renounced the conquests made bythe Tsarist Go vernm ent which deprived C hina o f M anchuria andother areas. Let the people living in those areas themselves decidewith in the frontiers o f which State they wish to dwell and whatform o f government they wish to establish in their ow n countries.

In the case of Manchuria the Soviet Government mayhave felt that these rhetorical sentiments were sufficientlysatisfied by concluding with the Manchurian warlord,Chang Tso-lin, an agreement supplementary to the Sino-Soviet Treaty of I 9 2 4 . It was the author of the Declara-tions, Leo Karakhan, who finalized these arrangements,and it was he who candidly commented upon them: Atpresent the Soviet Union is gaining a firm foothold in theFar East by occupying one of the most important posi-tions of which its enemies were trying to deprive it. InI 929 this position was defended by force in an undeclaredfrontier-war with the Chinese Nationalists. By I 9 3 2 it hadbeen surrendered, not to China but to Japan. In the re-mainder of the vast zone of Sino-Russian contact, anydegree of autonomy for its peoples had for more than acentury depended upon the distance at which effectiveChinese or Russian power could be kept by other factors,or the success with which the one might be played offagainst the other. As to the decision within the frontiersof which State they wish to dwell the Kirghiz and Kazakhpeoples could vote only with their feet. Many of them did


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T H E F R O N T I E R S O C H I Nso, in a fluctuating and increasingly desperate response tothe dictation of events.

It will be clear that an important factor in frontier-history has been the extent of active colonization fromeither side in the areas intervening between the twocentres of power. From the Chinese side especially, wherethe use of colonization in the strategy of politics wasrelatively slow to develop, this helps to distinguish thethree main zones of contact: the Central Asian Area, theMongolian Area and the Manchurian Area. Though theManchurian Area has a long history of Chinese settlementit had been a policy of the Manchu Emperors to preservetheir original patrimony by discouraging immigrationfrom China Proper. But throughout the I 9th centurytheir decrees on this subject proved less and less effective;and in 1878, with Russification proceeding intensivelybeyond the Amur River, the Peking policy was reversed.Chinese peasant migration from Inner to Outer Mongoliahad likewise been stagnant, and began to increase onlyafter the administrative absorption of Manchuria. Butattempts to push it forward in a systematic pattern playedinto the hands of Mongolian nationalism and Russiancalculation. In Sinkiang, the New Province of I 8 84, thefirst serious Chinese colonization was left to the Govern-ment of Mao Tse-tung.

T H E C E N T R L S I N R EIn the I 5th century Muscovite Russia and Ming Chinawere well over 2 000 miles apart at the nearest points,separated by deserts, mountains and steppelands and bya variety of peoples both settled and nomadic. By theI 880 s the moving frontiers of Tsarist and Manchuexpansion in Central Asia had met, dividing the inter-


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T H E N O R T H E R N M A R C H E Smediate lands and principal it ies into Russian a n d C hines eTurkestan.T h e Russ ian continenta l expansion had been ~ a r t l ymili tary in i ts mo tive an d defensive in i ts origins, begin-ning wi th the l iquidat ion of the menacing Tartar Khan-ates and never qui te los ing the memory of the Mongolinvasions of E uro pe. T h e nam e of Chin gh iz (Jenghiz)Khan indeed, to jud ge by i ts reappearance in Soviet-Chinese polemics, is st i l l one to conjure with. But theRussian advance had also a significantly colonizingcharacter , with imperial pol icy sometimes leading andsometimes merely fol lowing the outward movement ofdispossessed peasants, fugitive rebels and persecuted re-ligious dissenters.

T h e Chinese t radi tions of penet ration an d even ofpower in Central Asia, though long interrupted, were ofgreat ant iqui ty. In the 2nd cen tu ry B C t h e H a n E m -perors, engaged in a desperate s t rugg le wi th the H s iu n gNu-a nomadic T u r k i people whom they looked upon asscarcely hu m an -sou gh t for tribal alliances in th e fa rW es t while defending the Grea t W al l in the N or th . T h isprocess culminated , a t the pe ak of th e dynasty s success,in the inclusion of what was later called Sinkiang in theterr i tor ies of the Empire; and at the end of the 1stcentury A.D. a Chinese army had not only consol idatedcontrol over all the chiefs of the T ur ke sta n oases bu t ha dadvanced, for the f i rs t and only t ime, to the edge ofEu rop e on the Caspian Sea. W it h the collapse of the H a nEm pire th e C hinese tide receded, an d fourteen centurieswere to pass before it flowed strongly again in th e M a n c h uexpansion into Turkestan. But there had been in the7th century tem porary restoration of th e connectionunder the T an g Em perors, and in the 3th cen tury the


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T H E F R O N T I E R S O F CH INengulfing of both China and Central Asia in the almostworld-wide Mongol dominion.

The cyclic tradition was thus established. But from theChinese side there was nothing that really matched theprotracted process of Muscovite advance and settlementbeyond the Volga. Even under the Manchu Emperors,Sinkiang remained a region of alien exile for disgracedofficials and other offenders rather than a field for pioneers.The fact that these exiles and their families, few as theywere, were privileged by taxation and otherwise, didnothing to reconcile the peoples among whom they livedto their own political condition. Armed revolts werefrequent, bloody and difficult to deal with, since the areaof Chinese occupation was less accessible to the centralpower than were the Russian conquests. The most suc-cessful of these risings, that of Yakub Beg in I 864wrested authority from the Manchus for thirteen years,establishing a separate State which dealt directly withforeign Governments. The Russians sent missions toYakub Beg and obtained a commercial treaty, and similarenterprises by the British-Indian Government drewserious attention to the feasible- though formidablesouthern approaches through Ladakh.

For the Russians the success of Yakub Beg offeredparticular advantages, exposing the shadowy nature ofPeking s authority and at the same time hastening its needfor a settlement in the area of contiguity. And one resultwas to be the establishment of a Russian salient intoSinkiang in the region of Kuldja on the Ili River. Thisrelatively small but important area, midway in the zoneof Sino-Russian contact between the Pamir junction andthe Mongolian frontier in the Altai, is one of the historicgates of Inner Asia. The Ili, flowing westwards out of

6


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T H E N O R T H E R N M RCHESSinkiang, not only divides th e long m oun tain-ranges in awidening valley but is navigable for trade and fertile inpasturage. Historically it has provided a natural corridorfor the movement of nomadic or raiding peoples. InRussian eyes its military significance was cons iderable a ndeven symbolic, since it was thr ough this g ate tha t Ch ing-hiz Khan s M on go l cavalry h ad poured westwards. By1854, ten years before the revolt of Yakub Beg, theRussian expansion had been extended south-east of LakeBalkhash into the open country reaching to the foothillsof the T ien Sh an; and i t was sup po rted by th e constructionof forts, settlem ents an d com munications-forerunners ofthe Turk-Sib Railway. Even where a nominal Chineseoverlordship was acknowledged, the base of Chineseauthority was distan t by a difficult jou rney of six to twelvemonths. Russia was consequently able to secure tradeadvantages on the upper Il i , and in the Tarbagatai areafarther north.

Territorial consolidation was another matter. By theTreaty of Pe kin g in 8 6 0 the Chinese were compelled toaccept the completion of th e T sar s F ar Ea stern Prov -inces. But the clauses relating to Central Asia markedonly the beginn ing of delimitation, providing for a jointsurvey of the area of claim and contact from the foothillsof the Altai in th e north to the Khan ate of Ko kand u nd erthe brow of the Pamir. And for four years the ChineseCommissioners disputed and delayed the painful process.It had been agreed that a boundary should be mappedalong the line of hills where the Chinese maintainedpermanent pickets. But since there were also movableChinese pickets well to the west in lower country, anargument developed with the Russian Commissionersnot unlike that precipitated with India, more than a


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T H E F R O N T I E R S O F C H I N Acen tury later, by th e Ch inese interp retation of actualcontrol .

The crit ical defection in Sinkiang put an end to thesetactics. T h e year of Ya ku b Beg was also the year of theTr eaty of Ch ugu chak (or of Tarbagatai , O ctobe r 864),which fixed a fron tier in th e Russian favour. T h e Chinesewere thereby formally deprived of a belt of territory ofsome 350,000 square miles which, though certainly noteffectively occupied by them, had equally certainly beenclaimed by the movements of their forward control-pickets. And in 1871, after seven years in which theChinese inability to dislodge Yakub Beg had been dis-played, the Russians took a further bite. In that year,ostensibly as a measure of ord er, they o ccupied K uldja an dits strategic upper valley of the Ili River.In the usual sequence of Central Asian politics, theconcern of other European powers for a stable balancenow o perated to restrain th e R ussian advance an d sup po rtth e M an ch u authority. Pe kin g s next m ili tary effort inSinkiang was m ore successful, Y ak ub Beg was killed, andwith Brit ish and French approval the Chinese not onlyreasserted their authority over the Muslim inhabitants,bu t in 88 recovered the Ili salient from Russia. T h istook effect in the Treaty of St Petersburg (where it wassigned), which Peking prefers to call the Treaty of Ili.Even so, i t figures among the agreements l isted by MaoTse-tun g s Governm ent as uneq ual a nd revisable, since itstill left in Russian hands the area of traditional Chinesepretensions beyond the mountains. Over the next twelveyears, moreover, the boundary ag reements that punctuatedthe slow process of demarcation exhibited a considerableamount of Russian nibbling.

There remained the southern extremities of the Sino-8


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T H E N O R T H E R N M A R C H E SRussian contact, where Sinkiang reached up from theTarim basin into the lofty bastion of the Pamir. Here thefrontier-question had a special character, partly deter-mined by the encounter of Russian Imperial power withthat of British India and its Kashmir dependency. Sincethe primary aim of British policy was to halt Russianpenetration of the Pamir and to safeguard Kashmir fromserving as an invasion-route to the Punjab, Peking had adiplomatic opportunity far beyond its actual strength forsecuring the south-western frontier of Sinkiang. An effec-tive Chinese presence north of the Karakoram was clearlydisclosed as a British objective, to be sealed by a tripartitesettlement in the Pamir which should put a final term toRussian encroachment. Had the Chinese had the will toaccept this unofficial alliance with British power, and thestrength to assert themselves in frontier-contacts withRussia, they might have secured for Sinkiang not onlyan unambiguous western frontier, but also a southernfrontier which would have retained for them the majorpart of that strategic bone of contention now grimlyknown as the Aksai Chin.*The Chinese rejection of this opportunity was doubtlessdue in part to their instinctive reluctance towards treaty-making, especially during a phase of weakness; in part topreoccupations elsewhere they were defeated by theJapanese in I 895); and in part to a cherished ambition to

Of George Macartney, through whom persistent attempts were made toengage the Chinese in frontier-discussions, D r Alistair Lamb has written: Of allthe British diplomatists who dealt with China in the 19th century, there canhave been none who managed more successfully to combine a deep loyalty toBritain with a genuine sympathy for, and understanding of, Chinese aims andambitions. Alone in Kashgar, without at first official status and with no escortor other visible trappings of power, Macartney from 1890 until his retirement in1918 virtually staved off the complete domination of Sinkiang by RussiaThe China-India Border, Chatham House, I 964).


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T H E F R O N T I E R S O F C H I N Aextend their newly recovered hold in Sinkiang to the prin-cipality of Hunza at the western end of the KarakoramRange, over which both China and Kashmir claimedfeudatory rights. The result, at all events, was that theBritish power, having failed in all attempts to secureChinese participation, negotiated with Russia, in MarchI 895, an agreement in the Pamir which allotted to Afghan-istan a narrow strip of territory (the Wakhan Valley) in-sulating their two empires from the direct contiguitywhich was seen as a danger to peace. The Chinese after-wards referred to this important agreement as a secretpartition , and preserved in their maps a Chinese claim tothe Wakhan Valley and an undelimited status for theadjacent Sino-Russian frontier which should have beenpart and parcel of a tripartite settlement.On the maps (whatever form of marking might be used)the long Central Asian frontier was thus established bythe end of the 19th century; yet it represented neither areal division of power nor a barrier to movement. For thepeoples of the area, with their homelands and grazing-grounds divided between two alien powers, the attemptto play off one against the other offered the best hope ofpreserving something of their own identity. The Chinesesuppression of autonomy after the death of Yakub Beghad sent refugees into Russian Turkestan. Russian settle-ment on the Tsar s side of the border drove the dis-possessed Kazakhs to revolt in I 9 I 6 and the Communistthreat to their way of life after 1917 drove them to crossin large numbers to the Sinkiang side of their traditionalhomelands. Between 193 and I 934 Muslim revoltsagainst the Chinese and the proclamation of a Republicwere only suppressed with the military assistance of theRussians, who used the occasion to complete their eco-


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T H E N O R T H E R N M R C H E Snomic domination of Sinkiang and to introduce RedArmy garrisons and propaganda-centres. In face ofStalin s forced collectivization another 200 000 Kazakhsmoved into Sinkiang, where revolts against both Chineseand Russians were bloodily defeated in I 936 and I 937In the north the Kazakhs of the Altai were in continuousrebellion from I 940, and in 1946 an East TurkestanRepublic was once more proclaimed, no doubt withRussian connivance, this time in the strategic Ili areawhich Russia had long coveted and temporarily held.

The reconquest of Sinkiang by the Chinese Commun-ists in 1949, which brought apparent stability to thefrontier, was prepared by Communist contacts insidethose organs of local administration which the ChineseNationalist Government had been compelled to concede.But it could hardly have been effected, in the face of pop-ular opinion, without the disconcerting factor of Sovietassistance. In September I 949, before the proclamation ofthe Chinese People s Republic and with Stalin maintain-ing to the last minute his official recognition of ChiangKai-shek s authority, Soviet air-transports flew advancedunits of Mao s Eighth Route Army into Urumchi, theSinkiang capital. Soviet indoctrination had broken localefforts to consolidate a front of national resistance, and inthe Altai Soviet-trained Kazakhs were sent into actionagainst their fellow-countrymen. With the pincers nowclosing from east and west, the next great Kazakh migra-tion could only move south, in defiance of natural ob-stacles. A remnant survived the heroic journey acrossWestern Tibet into Kashmir, finally finding hospitalityin Turkey.

The ideological unity of former rivals, as expressed inthe I 950 Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and


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T H E F R O N T I E R S O F C H I NMutual Assistance, was not the only new factor injectedinto the history of the Central Asian borderlands. E qua l lyimportant, and more enduring in i ts effects, was theChinese adoption, for the first t ime, of a determinedpolicy of colonial settlement, a n d of eco nom ic exploitation,in what was eventual ly designated the Sinkiang-UighurAutonomous Region.

T H E M O N G O L I N R ET h e greater par t of China s nor thern f ront ier ru ns wi thO ute r M ongolia, now th e M ongol ian People s Republicand was sett led by agreem ent in D ece m ber 962 . Y et i t isdifficult to believe tha t Ch inese claims upo n O u te r M o n -golia itself have been finally aba ndo ned. I t was M a oTse -tung s expectation, a ccord ing to a conversation w ithE d g a r Snow in July 93 6, tha t when th e people s revolu-tion has been victorious in China, the O u te r M ong olianRepublic will automatically become a part of the Chinese

N l a n a to rMONGOLIAN PEOPLE SREPUBLICOUTER MONGOLIA)

S I N K I A N G

2. ongolian rea42


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T H E N O R T H E R N M R C H E Sfederation, a t their own will . W h e n he m ad e this state-me nt a f ictional Ch inese sovereignty over O u te r M ong oliahad not been formally broken, although its CommunistGovernment was subservient to Moscow and there wasnot even a Chinese representative in Ulan Bator. Butbefore M a o Tse -tung s victory in China, Stalin securedfrom the K M T Government, in 1945 , an agreement fo rChinese recognition of the independence of the Mongo-lian Republic.

After coming to power the Chinese Communistsevidently decided that there was more to be gained bypromoting Sino-M ongolian relations on this indepe nde ntbasis tha n by challenging it. As th e fruit s of leaning t oone side , th e gain of control in Sink iang could be balancedagainst the loss of title in Mongolia, where the oppor-tunity to exchang e diplomatic, cultural a nd econom ic mis-sions was quickly accepted. T h e whole question of O u te rMongolian autonomy, however, derives historically fromagreements concluded with Russia by the Ch inese R epu blicafter the overthrow of th e C h ing (M an ch u) dynasty. A ndthe term unequal , previously applied in C hin a to treaty-concessions made to other powers during the last half-century of the M an ch u Em pire, was extended by the verydeliberate People s Daily artic le of 8 M arc h 963, to coverany losses of Chinese territory in the No rth, South, Ea stor W est , du ring the hu ndre d years or so prior to thevictory of the Chinese revolution . T h e C hinese policywas said to be th e peaceful settlem ent of any outs tan din gissues when cond itions are ripe , until which time thestatus quo sho uld be maintained .

The case of Mongolia, as it happens, offers an earlierexample of the t ime appearing ripe for the ChineseGovernment to revoke unilaterally a previous agreement


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T H E F R O N T I E R S O F C H I N Aan d extend i ts control to a lost frontier. I t was in all iancewi th the Mongols tha t the Manchus had conqueredChina in th e 1 7t h century, producing in turn a ChineseImperial claim to the Mongolian lands. In the last yearsof the C h ing dynasty at the tu rn of th e present century,the O ute r M ongol ian m ovement to regain independencewas a reaction against the increasing pressure of Chinesecolonizat ion, nor thward from Inner Mongol ia . Themovem ent was suppo rted by the Tsa ris t Russian G overn-m ent, to which i t tu rn ed for aid. Interve ntion was seen tobe in Russia s interest, b ut it was equally in Russia sinterest to ensure that ful l independence from bothpowers should not result. W h e n the M an ch u Em pire wasoverthrown from within in I 9 I I Outer Mongol ia ( l ikeTibet) proclaimed its independence, which by Russianmediation in 9 3 i t was compelled to reduc e to auton-omy , with suzerainty for the Chinese Repu blic an dopenings for penetration by Russia. In 9 7, however,the Tsarist Government was itself overthrown by revolu-tion. T h e time was r ipe for the Chinese to sen d troopsinto Ou te r M ongolia an d cancel i ts autonomy, w hich theydid by Presidential decree in November 9 I 9.

E igh teen m on ths later they were expelled by th e forcesof the White Russian Baron Unghern-Sternberg, act ingand accepted as a Mongolian l iberator. No sooner hadautonomy been restored to Ou te r M ongolia than the RedArmy, with Mongolian Communists from Soviet terri-tory, crossed th e border, destroyed th e Gov ernm ent, sho tBaron Unghern-Sternberg and es tabl ished Outer Mon-golia as the first Soviet satellite.

T h e r ight which th e Chinese C omm unists have re-served to re-examine, among other past agreements, the8 6 4 T rea ty of Chu guchak, could b e used to reopen the


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T H E N O R T H E R N M R C H E Squestion of a former Mongolian territory of the ManchuEmpire which is now part of the Soviet Union. This wasthe 80,000 square miles of Urianghai in the North-West.The Treaty of Chuguchak, though mainly concerned withthe Sino-Russian frontier in Turkestan, also referred tothe northern frontier of Outer Mongolia as dividing theChinese Empire from Russian territory. And Urianghai,as later admitted in Moscow, was there defined as withinthe Chinese dominions. In 9 I , in support of the OuterMongolian autonomists, Russian forces entered by thisroute and occupied Urianghai, which in 1914 was de-tached as a Russian protectorate. It was nominally andbriefly recovered when Chinese troops returned to OuterMongolia after the Russian Revolution, but the Russianswere back again in 1922 when the Red Army brought aCommunist r6gime to Outer Mongolia. Th is time Urian-ghai became the Tuvinian People s Republic and thenthe Republic of Tannu Tuva , which in 1926 enteredinto mutual recognition of independence with the Mon-golian People s Republic. Independence in both cases wasat Soviet disposal, and in 1944 Tannu Tuva-with anarea of 64,000 square miles, a population of 70,000 andconsiderable natural resources- was quietly incorporatedin the Soviet Union as an Autonomous Region (laterraised in status to Autonomous Republic.) Chinese Com-munist maps apparently accept this loss, but the claim ispreserved in maps issued by the Chinese NationalistGovernment in Taiwan. Despite the concession of OuterMongolian independence extracted from Chiang Kai-shek by Stalin in 1945, the Chinese frontiers on thesemaps enclose Outer Mongolia as a province and TannuTuva as a division of it.

That the boundary between Inner and Outer Mongolia


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T H E F R O N T I E R S O F C H I N Ahas become the frontier of th e C hinese People s Rep ublicfor 2 500 miles is a result of Russian power and policy,both Tsaris t and Soviet , not of Mongolian r ights andaspirations. Interven ing as med iator in I I between theO ute r M ongo lian nationa lists an d the Ch inese K M TRepu blic, R ussia in I 9 I 5 brou ght th e part ies to a tr ipar-tite agree m en t w ith provision for form al delimitation by atr ipart i te boundary commission. I n the m eantime a fron-t ier zone was provis ionally indicated. T h e Fi rs t W o rl dW a r and the Russian Revolution interru pted th e processof fixing th e frontier, which was shown o n C hinese Com -munis t maps as undetermined. Sovie t and most o therm aps, however, indicated a fixed international boun dary.

T H E M A N C H U R I A N REChina s frontier with th e Soviet F a r E as t ru ns for some2 0 0 0 miles, from the mountainous north-east corner ofthe M ongolian People s Rep ublic to th e Pacif ic Oceansouth of Vladivostok. It is a physical boundary, followingth e A m u r river-system in th e first 6 0 0 miles it is tha t ofthe tr ibutary Argun, then of the Amur i tself eastwardsunti l i t receives the Ussuri from the south. Here theboundary turns southwards and runs ups tream to theheadwaters of the U ssu ri, w hence a relatively s ho rt sectorlinks the watershed with the coast.

The general case for natural frontiers has been criti-cized in Chinese Communist publications; and this im-portant area of the Soviet Far East, carrying the Trans -Siberian Railway t o Vladivostok, rep resents historically avery considerable invasion of the form er M an ch u E m pir e.W it h th e establishment of the Chinese People s Govern-ment the impression of a stabilized frontier, however,had been s trengthened by the 19 56 agreem ent for joint

4 6


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T H E N O R T H E R N M A R C H E SSino-Soviet investigation and development of the AmurRiver Basin, and co-operation in subsequent operationsdid not appear to have been interrupted by worseningrelations and the withdrawal of Soviet technicians from

3 Manchurian AreaChina. In normally current maps only one point of dis-crepancy was observed, near the Soviet city of Khabar-ovsk. Here the Chinese claimed an is land at the Amur-U ssu ri confluence, which in Soviet m ap s was included o nthe Russian side.M a p s of Chinese irredenta were a different matter . T h eloss of China s Great No rth-Ea st to which L iu Pei-H u a s rief History of Modern China had drawn at tent ionwas apparently fully redressed for the purpose o abrochure dis tr ibuted at the Chinese T ra d e Fair in M exico(December 1963-January 1964). In this a m ap o the


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T H F R O N T I R S O F C H I Nworld picked out in special tone the territories of Mexicoand China, with the latter clearly covering the old imperiallands east and north of the rivers. Moreover, three of theunequal treaties challenged by the People s aily inMarch I 963, were those in which the possession of theselands had been secured to Russia. These were the Treatiesof Aigun, Tientsin and Peking.

The Treaty of Aigun (May I 8 58) established the AmurRiver as a frontier between north and south, involving aChinese surrender to Russia of about I 85,000 squaremiles. A form of Chinese jurisdiction, however, wasallowed over the Manchu inhabitants of what were calledthe Sixty-Four Settlements on the left bank of the Amur.East of the Ussuri the maritime lands facing the Pacificwere to be common to Russia and China pending a futuredecision on the matter.

The Treaty of Tientsin (June I 858) followed closelyupon the Aigun Treaty and settled commercial matters.It further provided for the survey of frontiers, althoughthis had already been covered in the preceding settlement.

The Treaty of Peking (November I 860) sealed the fateof the territories between the Ussuri and the Pacific( I 3 3,000 square miles) which were ceded to Russia. Thefrontier was established as running south along theUssuri, and thence to the boundary of Korea, with provi-sion for surveying and mapping this sector.

The first treaty concerning this area, however, datesfrom as early as 1689. The Treaty of Nerchinsk of thatyear was indeed the first ever to be concluded between theChinese Empire and a Western Power. The beginning ofa purposive Russian penetration east of Lake Baikal hadcoincided roughly with the establishment of the Manchudynasty in I 644. But before turning south to the conquest

8


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T H E N O R T H E R N M R C H E Sof China the Manchus had extended their native controlnorthwards over the Amur Basin, and the predatoryCossack occupation of the valley in the next few yearscame up against, and defeated, a Manchu-Chinese force.The Nerchinsk Treaty of 1689 followed a period ofRussian efforts to make diplomatic contact with Pekingand of Chinese efforts to dislodge them from their newstrongpoints and settlements. It gained for the Russianscommercial openings in the Celestial Empire. But theManchu negotiators, supported by preponderant militaryforces, achieved a frontier-settlement along the watershedrange between the valleys of the Lena and the Amur,thus retaining the latter and requiring the removal ofRussian settlements and the destruction of their fort atA1 bazin.Despite discrepancies in the different texts of thetreaty on the subject of undecided territories, the Ner-chinsk settlement was not seriously disturbed during thenext century and a half. But the, Manchus failed to con-solidate their position, since their own movements weredirected southwards at the same time as they discouragedChinese settlement in the Manchurian lands. New con-tacts and communications were put to far better use bythe penetrating Russians than by the exclusive Chinese,and by the I 850 s the decline of China s imperial powerhad removed most of the obstacles to Russia s advance inthis region- the only one where she had a clear advantageover rival Western Powers. The Russian strategy whichpushed the frontier southwards to the Amur River withthe unequal treaties of Aigun and Tientsin in I 858 wasthus able to combine physical occupation with a diplo-matic presentation of Russia to the Chinese as an allyagainst their other despoilers.


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T H E F R O N T I E R S O F C H I N AThe even more valuable maritime provinces east of the

Ussuri were secured by Russia two years later in differentcircumstances. In 1859 he Imperial Court at Peking,blindly over-estimating initial successes in resistingAnglo-French demands, was more inclined to remind theRussians of past treaty-obligations than to depend ontheir assurances of assistance. The Russians thereforecourted the Western Allies, who in August 86 were onthe one hand advancing upon Peking, and on the otherdefending Shanghai for the Chinese authorities againstthe Tai-ping rebels. The Chinese were not deceived bythe tactics of the Russians, whom indeed they believed tobe responsible for inciting the other barbarians. But theywere defeated. When the Ussuri territory was surrend-ered in the Sino-Russian Treaty of Peking in November

860 the site and name of the Russian port of Vladivostok( Dominion of the East ) had already been chosen.

In I 89 construction of the Vladivostok-Khabarovsksection of the Russian Trans-Siberian Railway was begun;and in 1895 Russia-this time in the r61e of China sprotector against Japan- secured permission to build arailway-link with Vladivostok inside the Chinese frontier,across Manchuria. This was followed by further conces-sions, including mineral rights and the leases of PortArthur and Dairen. By defeating Russia in 19 5 apansecured these rights for herself, but a subsequent dP cntedefined spheres of influence in the Manchurian regionfor both Russia and Japan. The arrangement producedthe so-called Kuropatkin Line along the 43rd parallel,which was apparently seen in Moscow as the basis for aneventual north-south boundary between Russian andChinese Asia. Extended westwards to the Tien-Shan, itwould have claimed for Russia, besides Northern Man-


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T H E N O R T H E R N M A R C H E Schuria, the whole of Outer Mongolia and the northernportion of Sinkiang.

Secret agreements between Moscow and Tokyo, asallies in the F irst W o rld W ar , for co op er atio n in defenceof their vital interests in th e F a r E a s t were, of course,invalidated by the Russian Revolution in 19 7. But theapparent renunciation of Tsarist acquisitions in the FarEast by the Karakhan Declaration 2 5 July 1919) took asignificantly different turn in the following year, whenthe e ntire territory of the form er R ussian Em pir e, east ofthe River Selenga an d L ak e Baikal was transferred, noneof it to Ch ina, bu t all of it to a newly declared Far Eas ter nRepublic with a very large measure of independence.Japanese troops were advancing into the power-vacuumoffered by th e collapse of T sa ris t Russia, and M oscow surgent need was for a policy that might unite Bolshevikand anti-Bolshevik inhabitants in a nationalist preserva-tion of the territory. T h e Japanese withdrew from th emainland, and three weeks later, on 1 4 No vemb er 192 2,the Republic was abso rbed into th e central Soviet State asthe Far Eastern Territory of the RSFSR (later recon-stituted as the Khabarovsk and Maritime Territories).Declarations defining its boundaries made no departurefrom the frontier established with China during theTsarist period. Beyond the frontier, all the rights of theformer Russian Empire in the zone of the ChineseEastern Railway had already been claimed on behalf ofthe short-lived F ar E aste rn Republic .* Bu t these, in th ecourse of events, fell to the Japanese, pushing forwardwith increasing force the undeclared war between their

T h e Karakhan Declaration had specifically undertaken that this ChineseEastern Railway should be handed over to the Chinese without compensationRussian pretence that this was a forged interpellation h s been disproved


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T H E F R O N T I E R S O F C H I Nspecial rights in Manchuria and the rising substance andspirit of Chinese nationalism. Such disputes of the AmurRiver frontier as occurred thus involved Russia and Japan,or the Soviet Union and the puppet regimes which theJapanese, following the Soviet precedent, proceeded toestablish in North China.In the agreement reached with the Kuomintang Gov-ernment of China in May 924, the Soviet Governmentas we have seen, had avoided any undertaking pointingto a frontier-rectification in favour of China. In 1945 theGovernment of Chiang Kai-shek was again in too weak aposition to obtain from Stalin s USSR, in the Treaty ofFriendship and Alliance, anything more than a professionof mutual Russian and Chinese respect for each other ssovereignty and territorial integrity. U p till the success ofthe Chinese Communists, indeed, the prospects wererather of the advance of Soviet power south of the Amur(as well as in Sinkiang). And Stalin s double stratagem ofstripping the Manchurian industries on the one hand, andallowing arms to fall into Communist Chinese hands onthe other, strongly suggests the aim of prolonging con-flict in the coveted area and crippling its winners. MaoTse-tung s rapid advance to central power transformedthe situation on the Chinese side of the existing frontier.It secured a slow liquidation of the Russian extra-terri-torial advantages which had been yielded to Japan butwere re-assigned to Stalin by his Western Allies at Yaltain anticipation of victory. Of these China had by 1932recovered the Chinese Eastern (Changchun) Railwaywithout compensation, but the pretext of the Korean Warserved to keep Soviet forces n Port Arthur. Only afterStalin s death was China s re-possession within the Man-churian frontiers completed by the Soviet withdrawal


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T H E N O R T H E R N M R C H E Sfrom Port Arthur in 195s and the transfer to China ofSoviet shares in the Manchurian joint-stock companies.On the frontier itself, and Chinese claims beyond it,official silence was complete. Even in Mao s earlier andambitious territorial aims, as expressed to Edgar Snow in

936, what was to be recovered in this area had been allterritories lost to Japanese imperialism . In a Communistprogramme no claims against the Soviet Union could beadmitted. And their revival in March 1963 followed anideological campaign in which the title of the Sovietleadership to be regarded as genuinely Communist hadbeen progressively impugned.


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T H E Q U E S T I O N OF T I B E TC P C I T Y T O N E G O T I T E

s in the case of O u te r M ongolia, Ch inese relations withTibet involve two separate considerations of boundary-matters. The first applies to the frontiers between Chinaprope r an d th e territory over which a form of suzera inty isclaimed or exercised. The second, which applies to thefron tiers of the territory with o the r States, arises only if itfalls under sufficient control to be considered as a part ofChina. I n April I 9 I 2 the announced intention of the newChinese R epublic was to convert the lands of the M ong olsand the Tibetans into Chinese Provinces, on the lines ofthe New Dom inion declared in Sinkiang after th e des-truction of the native principality of Y ak ub Beg. Russianpower, as we have noted, prevented the execution of thisproject in O u te r M ongolia, and prevents it to this day. Inthc ca se of Ti bet B ritish power in I 9 I 2 compelled th e newChinese Republic to recall the military expedition whichhad already been despatched. At the same time a Britishrecognition of Chinese suze rainty in T ib e t was made con-ditional on a Chinese recognition that suzerainty did notinclude the righ t to intervene in the coun try s internal ad-ministration or the right to send in military forces. TheChinese avoided any guarantee of this kind , but offered asconciliatory gestures permission for the Dalai Lama toreturn from the exile in India forced upon him by theManchu invasion of I 9 1 0 an d the restoration of h is offi-cial rank. In fact the Dalai Lama had already returned toLhasa and resumed the temporal and spiritual-government,


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T H E Q U E S T I O N O F T I B E Tand he replied that he wanted no rank or appointmentfrom Peking.

In the Tibetan view the formal relationship with Chinahad been brought to an end. The turning-point had comein I 910 when the last spasms of the Manchu Empirefound a capable and ruthless general Chao Er-feng andan expedition equipped with modern weapons to carryinvasion to Lhasa itself-the first time that the Chinesehad entered the capital against the Tibetan will. Tibetanindependence declared in reaction to this aggression wasmade good when the collapse of the Manchu regimeallowed the Tibetans to expel the invaders from the entirecountry killing the commander. Defence of the frontieragainst further Chinese attacks continued until I 9 I 3 andthe Simla Conference of October I 9 I 3 to April I 9 I4 wascalled by Britain acting in an essentially mediatory rele todefine the relationship and frontiers of two parties con-ferring with equal status and then to clarify its ownposition. On the results of the Simla Conference the In-ternational Commission

1966 the Frontiers of China by Watson s

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